'Need for Speed: Most Wanted' preview: 'Burnout' rides again

Need for Speed: Most Wanted takes its inspiration from Criterion's much-loved Burnout Paradise, but also looks to the future with advanced racing based around the Autolog social challenge system. We got behind the wheel in both single and multiplayer in this open-world street-racing spectacular.

For Need for Speed: Most Wanted, EA again asked Criterion Games to work its magic, after the Guilford-based studio handled the well-received Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. Although technically a re-imagining of 2005's original Need for Speed: Most Wanted (made by EA Canada), the game should really be viewed as the spiritual successor to Criterion's own Burnout Paradise.

Certainly, anyone who has logged some serious game time in the 2008 title will see this creative lineage in full effect. Just like Burnout: Paradise (and thankfully unlike last year's rather confused Need for Speed: The Run), Most Wanted offers a totally open world where players are free to indulge their petrolhead pleasures.

Need for Speed: Most Wanted's big new feature is that you don't unlock new cars related to your progress. Instead, you drive around the city and if you see a tempting vehicle with an icon floating above it, then you can 'jack' it. This means that you can enter the game as a new player and pretty much instantly be driving a Ford GT or Lamborghini Countach, rather than having to laboriously climb through the rankings via 'lesser' vehicles.

There is no story in Need for Speed: Most Wanted, but there is a loose structure involving players taking down all the premium 'Most Wanted' cars in Fairhaven - the hodgepodge mix of various American cities that acts as the game world. But realistically, the Most Wanted challenge is just the sideshow to the game's real focus: hooning around in ridiculously fast cars, racing other drivers at breakneck speeds and annoying the local cops.

At the heart of the game is the Easy Drive system, a drop down menu that acts as the main hub for accessing races and missions, improving your cars and jumping into the multiplayer (Easy Drive is also accessible with voice commands via Xbox Kinect). Every car has different missions and switching is a delicately-poised choice between building up a favored vehicle or trying something new. Thankfully, neither option is unpleasant.

After its successful inclusion in Hot Pursuit, the Autolog system returns for the new game. Whilst in the previous game only times were compared between you and your online friends, Autolog 2.0 in Most Wanted pretty much compares everything. Blast past a speed camera and your top MPH is listed on a leaderboard; smash through a billboard with the longest jump and your face will be immortalized until someone breaks your achievement; last longer in a chase with the cops and your friends will soon know about it.

What is great about Need for Speed: Most Wanted is how the game knits the sense of achievement so closely around you, rather than focusing on lofty and unattainable leaderboards. You are never compared with the best players unless you are among them; instead you are compared with people of similar abilities and skills. This means that you are more willing to push on and try to beat the challenges, as the achievements feel closer and more attainable.

The game is fuelled by Speed Points (or SP), which is essentially experience. Earn points to rise up the leaderboards, access new Most Wanted missions and also earn upgrades for your cars. Pretty much everything earns you SP, including smashing up the city or surviving police chases. Indeed, some of the greatest fun we had in Need for Speed: Most Wanted involved getting our Police Wanted level up to the maximum six, and then evading the SUVs, spike strips and road blocks to get away scot free.

In a sense, the single-player game feels like multiplayer because the Autolog is so integrated that you always feel that you are competing with real players. The cars you are actually racing in the game are controlled by the computer, but the aggressive AI certainly offers a decent challenge. Most Wanted also features a multiplayer component, but this is where things get a little less conclusive.

You enter the multiplayer through Easy Drive, which puts you in a different car but in the same world along with other free roaming players. Instead of picking a specific mode, the game just selects options at random and then calls all the players to a Meeting Point for the start. The modes themselves are pretty fun, including Team Races (four on four), or a rather devilish game involving you having to park in a spot for as long as possible without being smashed off by other cars.

However, the problem is that nothing is made very clear. There is only the minimum amount of guidance, as Criterion wants players to work things out for themselves. We played the multiplayer game for two hours and spent a lot of that time rather confused. Modes often descended into just chaotic messes of everyone smashing into everyone else. It was fun, sure, but there was a lack of coherency compared to the single-player campaign.

After the rather confused Need for Speed: The Run last year, this seems to be a return to form for EA's racing series. The single-player game excels as a truly open world for indulging your petrol-fuelled fantasies.

The multiplayer is chaotic and lacks direction, perhaps, but those who persevere will find things to love about the challenges. Mostly, though, when you are screaming down the underpass in a Gallardo pursued by every cop in Fairhaven, the game makes you truly feel like the most wanted.